Epcot officials announced today that the next celebrity voice to narrate the Spaceship Earth attraction will be Mike Tyson. The former professional boxer beat out a long line of celebrities vying for the job including Rosanne Barr, Brendan Fraser, Fran Drescher, and Brock Lesner.
“We are very excited to have Mr. Mike Tyson be our next narrator,” said Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III, Vice President of Epcot’s Spaceship Earth Narrator Search. “The process of finding a new narrator begins almost immediately after the current one is chosen. It’s a grueling process that not many Hollywood celebrities are up to. Mike Tyson impressed us all with is cadence and articulation.”
Geronimo went on to tell us that the process for choosing a narrator generally takes about nine years. The celebrities vying for the position often have to come in and audition three or four times a month. From there, a committee of seven individuals congregate once a week to discuss the candidates. A winner is then chosen based on the results of a potato sack race at the Disney company picnic.
“Mike Tyson showed us that he could win that race over and over again, so therefore we knew he was the perfect candidate to narrate Spaceship Earth,” Geronimo concluded.
The coveted role of Spaceship Earth narrator is one that many in Hollywood aim to achieve. Those who have earned the spot have later stated that it was the pinnacle of their career. To date, the popular Epcot ride has been narrated by Lawrence Dobkin, Walter Cronkite, and Jeremy Irons. The attraction is currently voiced by Dame Judi Dench, and has been since 2008.
Dench has previously mentioned the rigors of voicing the narration in her online blog. In it, she describes the long days, Disney’s attention to detail, and what it’s like working with Disney’s Linguistics Coach.
“Coach Nelson was an absolutely delightful instructor,” Dench writes in her blog. “He was so incredibly patient. Disney requires that the narrator who won the potato sack race record the narration 160 times so each ride vehicle gets a unique narration. It was quite exhausting but ultimately rewarding.”
When reached for comment about his acceptance, Tyson responded with, “I don’t understand why people would want to get rid of pigeons. They don’t bother no one.”
Tyson will begin recording his narration in February 2017, with implementation into Spaceship Earth happening sometime in 2019.
